Word: pound
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Some might claim that fair trade coffee importers distort the market by instituting a price floor of $1.26 per pound for the fairly traded beans. Any distortion of a market often makes proponents of laissez faire economic theory very uncomfortable. The market for coffee, however, is already distorted by parasitic middlemen—often referred to as “coyotes” by Latin American coffee farmers...
HUDS would not comment on the cost of either type of coffee, but HFTI members say the fair trade coffee sells for about $5 per pound retail, while the regular beans cost less...
...They can accumulate capital such as trucks and processing machinery, and by selling through cooperatives, farmers increase their market power. Fairly traded coffee is also better for the environment because farmers are given a 15 cent premium for organic coffee in addition to the guaranteed price of $1.26 per pound. Nearly 80 percent of fair trade coffee is organically grown and, because the majority is grown on small farms, the clear-cutting of rainforest in order to build large plantations does not occur...
Critics of fair trade coffee often argue that by guaranteeing a wage floor of $1.26 per pound, market forces will not prevent oversupply. However, the current market is not free. Producers in poor countries do not benefit from the same government subsidies that American farmers do and are restricted from: emigrating to richer countries such as the U.S. While producers who can’t profit in one sector should be able to switch to another, coffee farmers are generally too poor to do so. (If they do switch, coca, a source of cocaine, is one of the most profitable...
...play one of the few songs she knew, John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery.” “I really sucked,” she recalls in an interview a few days after the Newbury appearance. When a passerby flipped a pound coin into the guitar case, it was an electric moment (on multiple levels) for Lord...